Sanguis Sanctus
by agelade
Summary: Episode set within season 7. The boys take on a case as a break from leviathan hunting: mutilated corpses, missing organs? Definitely their kind of thing.


Sanguis Sanctus

A _Supernatural_ Story

_I. when she screams, she's a symphony_

A dark night, a slash and a scream. Tear into her face with a knife, leave a mark, a signature. Splash blood and viscera across the canvas of her body, the walls, a beacon, call to arms, a call to dinner.

She was seventeen, she was sweet. She was perfect.

_II. a body is a map, unknown the destination_

"Emily Hopkins," Sam read from the laptop screen. "Seventeen years old, straight A student. Found... missing her heart, liver, and lungs..." He skimmed the rest of the article.

"Aw come on, man. We just finished a case." Dean made a face at the goo hiding inside the detached barrel of his gun and gestured to it as evidence. "You have these lined up, or what?"

Sam pressed his lips into a thin line. "Not exactly."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "What's 'not exactly' mean?"

"I have a few keywords set up in an alert service that sends me a daily email with articles from all over the country that have matching keywords in the text."

Dean blinked. "Well, it beats googling 'freaky accidents.'"

Sam was scrolling back up and skimming again. "Yeah," he said, distracted.

"So which keywords did this one ping?"

"Ping?"

"Yeah, ping. As in, a bit of data that gets sent out to alert-"

"I know what ping means," Sam said. "I didn't know _you_ knew what ping means."

Dean looked off, embarrassed. "I might have asked Charlie to tell me a little about her... you know, what she does."

"Oooookay. Nice to see you joining the 21st century, anyway." Sam was already scrolling back up a third time to scan the article again. "I don't see any of my specific keywords at all," he said.

"Well, maybe you're just not seeing straight quite yet. This last job kinda knocked you on your ass."

"Don't remind me."

Dean watched Sam scroll. The poltergeist they'd just exterminated had started off as a welcome break from the whole leviathan thing, but it had ended up with ectoplasm jamming Dean's .45 and Sam coming _this_ close to losing his head. Sam hadn't frozen up like that in years, and it was disconcerting.

"So, this case-" Dean prompted.

"Yeah, here's the thing. The local PD is baffled. No suspects, no motive. Nothing."

"There's never _nothing_," Dean said. He blew into the disassembled barrel of his gun and eyed it again before starting on the reassemble. "And why don't we think this is a run of the mill serial killer?"

Sam scoffed. "'Run of the mill serial killer.' Wow, our lives are messed up."

"Well?"

"Okay... How about the fact that there's been a rash of killings in the area in the past two months?"

"All missing heart, liver, and lungs?"

"Uh... sort of. Some missing heart, some missing other parts. I'm thinking it's not the specific body parts that are important-"

"Some ghoulie just ordering a la carte?"

Sam nodded. "Serial killers are usually a bit more..."

"OCD about things?"

Sam smiled wanly. "Yeah."

Dean smiled back, self-satisfied. "Looks like we're hitting the road." He frowned then. "Where we goin' again?"

"Uh... Lincoln, Pennsylvania." Sam looked up from the laptop. "About seven hours drive, middle of nowhere."

Dean sucked on his teeth. "Great. Just great. Pack your banjo, Sammy."

Sam made a face. "That's the - not - nevermind."

_III. we cannot know the chart of every constellation_

"This place is actually not a dump. Good job, Sam."

"Don't congratulate me," Sam said, dropping his backpack onto one of the beds. "It's the only motel in town."

The room was done up mostly tastefully in dark reds and browns, a nice watercolor over each queen bed, dust-free drapes that promised to block out all light. Dean sat on his bed and immediately checked for cable television.

"Sammy look, cartoons."

Sam smiled briefly and seated himself at the little table to get on the motel's wifi. It _was_ the only place in town, so thank God they offered it for a mere $20 a night. He pulled up the article he'd been reading and his notebook and went over what they had.

"So, Emily Hopkins was... a student at Lincoln East High School. She was a cheerleader-"

"Oooh!" Dean said.

"Competitively," Sam finished.

Dean's face fell into confusion. "How do you compete in cheerleading?"

Sam shrugged. "Routines... Some of it can get really complex. These girls and - guys - are pretty athletic."

"Oh don't tell me-" Dean's face lit up and he grinned, faux-proud.

"No. No. Stanford didn't have, and I wasn't, a male cheerleader. Come on," Sam said, waving him off.

"It's okay, Sammy. You can tell me. I promise I'll be proud."

"Dean. Can you get serious?"

"Nope."

Sam sat back from his laptop and stared at it, lips pursed.

"Oh come on," Dean said, conciliatory. "Fine, tell me about this girl, the organ donor."

"_Emily_," Sam corrected, then sighed and relaxed forward again to consult the article. "Was a - cheerleader, right. Active in drama, volleyball, and... had an afterschool job."

"Any relation to the other vics?"

"Not as far as I can tell from what little there is here. I'm guessing the cops have more. Time to suit up?"

"You know it," Dean said.

Twenty minutes later, hair properly in place, suits de-wrinkled, IDs re-edged where the laminate had started to come unstuck, Sam and Dean kicked back in the impala, heading out to the police station with grand intentions of impersonating FBI agents and getting elbow deep in at least one cadaver.

"I take it back," Dean said, tapping on the steering wheel along with the music and grinning. "It's good to be on a case again, right?"

Sam frowned. "Yeah. I guess."

"Come on, Sam. This was your idea. What's with this sourpuss act?"

Sam looked up at Dean. "What sourpuss act?"

"This, this mopey..." He mimicked what he thought looked like Sam, moping - hunched shoulders, gopher teeth.

Sam made a face. "I don't do that." He looked out the window. "And I'm not being a sourpuss. I just..."

"Just what?"

"I'm waiting... for the other shoe to drop."

Dean stared at the road, cursing roundly in the comfort of his own noggin. He didn't know if Sam had actually heard him say that to Bobby before - any of the times something was going on with Sam and Dean could only wait to see what life-changing traumatic colossal screw-up was going to come next, either because Sam was being bone-headed or because the universe was just having fun at his little brother's expense again - and of course, Dean wasn't blameless himself and that just made things more complicated for them.

But they'd hashed this out already. He thought they were good.

"What other shoe?" he said, deciding without actually thinking about it to give Sam some space to talk it out. The whole "talking it out" thing had been doing them pretty good.

Sam looked at him, brows up, the picture of surprised-puppy. "Uh, nothing, nevermind." He turned back to the window.

"We're not going down this road again, Sammy," Dean said then, voice low.

Sam blew out a breath on a little laugh. "I'm not hiding anything from you Dean, except stuff I don't want to talk about. Okay? I'm allowed to just not want to talk about stuff."

"Yeah, you're allowed," Dean said, shaking his head. "And normally I'd be the one driving that train, you know that, but lately-" Dean blew out a breath and watched the road. Why was it _always_ a fight with this kid. He tapped the steering wheel. "Listen, forget I said it like that. I didn't mean - I'm just saying- I'm saying-"

"What, Dean. What are you saying?"

Dean gritted his teeth. "I'm saying, you can talk to me. You know, about whatever. Nothing has to be wrong, you know like - _our_ kind of wrong. You can just... talk to me."

"Yeah, right." Sam laughed. "Dean Winchester, sensitive listener."

"Yuck it up, moonbright," Dean growled. "We're here, let's just get this done."

The police station was small, but it buzzed with activity. They flashed their badges with fake names on their lips, but were ushered into an office to wait before even breathing the word "Agent." Dean blinked at Sam. Sam shrugged, hands spread in complete wtf-mode. He tried to flag down a passing officer. She ignored him. He gave up and sidled over to Dean to watch the passers-by and said, "What do you make of _this_?"

"Busy little bees, aren't they? Who knew a town this small could have so many cops?" They watched for another moment, then Dean went out to try his luck. He stepped right into an officer's path, so she couldn't just ignore him, and held up his badge, caught her eye, smiled that slightly threatening fuck you smile, and she reluctantly turned toward him and Sam and stepped into the office.

"Can I help you?"

"Busy today," Dean said.

"Agents Carter and Bernson," Sam said, flashing his badge briefly. "We're here about a seventeen year old vic, missing some-" He gestured at his own torso, and Dean supplied:

"Innards." He grinned.

"Emily Hopkins," Sam continued, sparing Dean a warning look. Dean made a face back.

The officer looked them both up and down, then shook her head and said, "Follow me."

The morgue wasn't buzzing like the rest of the station, but only because one man does not a buzzing population make. The place was scrubbed clean, dazzling and prim. The coroner was brisk. "She's already autopsied. My report, and if you have any questions-"

Sam and Dean shared a look. "Actually," Dean said. "We do."

"-You can make an appointment," the coroner finished, then frowned.

"Just a couple of quick ones," Sam put in hastily, bodily stepping in front of the man to block his exit. "What can you tell us about the organs that were left in the body? Anything... unusual about them?"

The coroner rolled his eyes. "No. Nothing unusual."

"And the missing organs - the heart, lungs, liver - they weren't recovered? Even partially?"

"Nope. Now if you'll excuse me."

"Just one more question," Dean said. "What can you tell us about the other five victims in the past seven weeks?"

"Other victims?" the coroner asked.

"Yeah." Sam stepped back and let Dean stare the guy down. Dean kept track of his brother in the periphery as he strolled around the lab, touching things. The coroner was visibly irritated, but when he tried to step forward to confront Sam, he stopped himself short and glared at Dean, obviously thinking better of it. Dean grinned as Sam rattled off the names. "Adam Lawson. Gabrielle Sanders. Chris Faulk-"

The coroner cut him off. "Do you think they're related?"

"Maybe," Sam said. He spun from his stroll to smile at the man, brows up, picture of innocence. "Missing organs-"

"All different ones, though."

"Strange symbols carved into their flesh-"

"Again, all different symbols. Our guy says there's no way they were killed by the same person. He says best guess, whoever killed the first kid, Adam Lawson, is done or moved on, and Sanders, Faulk, Avery, and the rest - they're copycats, different copycats who don't know enough of the facts of the case to do it the way the first guy did."

"Well, we'd just like to explore every possibility," Dean said.

"You know how it is," Sam agreed, still with that smile.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know how it is," the coroner said. He skirted around Dean, and went to his file drawers. "Why don't I just make you some copies of their files as well, then."

"Yeah, why don't you," Sam said, nodding. He tilted his head and raised his brows, and Dean had to keep himself from shaking his head in disbelief that Sam could pull that innocent puppy thing out without missing a beat, after everything they had done and been through. _Good show, kid. _"We'll be right here."

The coroner left maybe a little too quickly. Dean watched him go, then shook his head. He looked back up at Sam to say: "That guy was this close to peeing his pants," but stopped short at "that." He frowned at Sam's smiling face. "How can you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Man, it's creepy. Stop it."

Sam grinned. "Stop what?"

"Smiling, like you mean it."

Sam shrugged. "I do mean it."

"Yeah, because you're just made of sunshine."

"Yeah, I kinda am."

Sam smiled again, and Dean watched him, because it was odd and troubling, but it really did seem to be genuine. And it had to be faked, had to be, because just twenty minutes before, in the car, he was so bothered, and Sam wasn't Sam if he wasn't in agony over _something_.

Dean shook his head and stepped into Sam's space. "Yeah. Right. This? This is a conversation."

Sam shrugged, closed his eyes and the smile faded into a resigned line. He exhaled and his whole body drooped. "No it isn't."

"Yes, it is-" But the coroner came back just then with six photocopied files for them, and Dean barely thanked him in his haste to get Sam out of there and into the car, barely restraining himself from dragging Sam along by the arm.

They sat in the parking lot of some no-name fast food joint with their burgers and sodas, only Sam had his turkey burger and some iced tea or something and Dean smirked about it, but his heart wasn't in it.

"Case, Dean," Sam said without looking up from the file he was studying.

"What?"

"Stop spacing out. We got a case."

"I'm not spacing out," Dean said, petulant. "_You're_... spacing out."

Sam gave him The Face. "Nice comeback," he pitched back, that dumb smile at the corners of his mouth again.

"Shut it." Dean looked out of the driver's side window to give himself anywhere else to look other than the strangely serene dude sitting in the passenger seat, silently shuffling through crime scene photos graphic enough to give a horror movie make-up artist the shakes. Every few moments, between bites of his sandwich, Sam made a note in a notebook that, though new, had started to look like a more orderly, organized version of their dad's.

Sam cleared his throat. "What."

"What, what."

Sam sighed, a whole body sigh, and he turned to Dean, eyebrows in puppy-mode. "You keep looking at me." He gestured at Dean's lap. "And you still have half a cheeseburger."

"I'm not looking at you."

"Dean." Sam blew out a breath again and stared at the dash in front of him. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm... I'm me, and I'm not currently preparing for some kind of doom or eternal torment, and I'm … I'm dealing. And I'm not lying to you about anything nefarious or self-destructive- I'm fine. Are you fine?"

"Oh I'm _fine_!"

"Good."

"I know it's good."

"Well, that's... great." Sam watched him another moment, then shook his head and turned back to the file folder in his lap.

"I know it's great," Dean muttered, bringing his soda to his mouth and hunting for the straw as he tried to look casually out the window.

Back at the motel, Dean tested the cable for porn while Sam poured over the photos, mumbling over the information each file presented. He bounced ideas off Dean for hours, but no one monster fit the pattern, no one cult fit the symbols. No one theory accounted for everything. Sam apparently hadn't noticed Dean shift to one syllable grunt responses, and Dean took the opportunity to watch for signs of something dark in his brother, waiting to jump out of the other shoe when it hit the ground.

But all he saw was Sam, Sammy, hunting down stupid dead-end trail after stupid dead-end trail, matching up symbols to his screen, pen in his mouth, notebook propped up and held open at a page by another file folder.

Just... Sammy.

It was eight o'clock in the evening when Sam said, that peculiar tone of discovery in his voice: "Hang on. Okay, so there's no connection between these victims at all."

Dean frowned and nodded. "Not exactly a breakthrough, Sam." He strolled around the room with a beer.

"There's no connection between them," Sam continued rolling his eyes, "until they're dead. Then-" He flipped through the files just to confirm. "Every one of their cases is handled by the same detective."

Dean smiled with half his mouth. After a moment of Sam looking at him with his brows up, like _don't you get it_, Dean said, "Okay. I'm trying here, Sam, but-"

"The same investigator is on all six cases the coroner was convinced weren't related. He's the one calling them copycat murders, he's the one preventing the real FBI from getting involved."

Dean nodded along. "They'd come in if it were actually a serial killer case." Dean laughed. "Imagine his face when the coroner tells him we showed up anyway!"

Sam was frowning. "Yeah..."

"So, this..." Dean stood behind Sam to peer over Sam's shoulder at the name. "Detective Rosen doesn't want the Feds involved. Do we think he's actually doing the killing? Or just instructing whoever _is_ to put in the wrong details, so he can say copycat. Great. A smart one. I guess that means the symbols we've been researching are useless too."

"Not necessarily." Sam flipped through his little notebook. "I mean, why carve symbols at all if they didn't mean _something_. They're important."

Dean watched Sam nod at his notebook thoughtfully. "So I guess we suit up and talk to this Detective Rosen, huh?"

Sam nodded, distracted. Then he lifted his head. "What? No, one of us has to research the symbols."

Dean grinned. "I'll be back by midnight, library boy."

"Dean, I can't. I've been staring at them for hours." For illustration, he stretched his arms over his head and backward, cracking his back, shoulders, neck. "Let me go out, talk to this guy. You can overwork _your_ brain for once."

"No can do, buddy-"

"Stop it, Dean." Sam drew his arms back in quick, all pretense dropped. "You've been itchy since we started this case. The sighing and watching out of the corner of your eye and asking me stupid questions about _smiling_? I know it's me. I know you think something is up with me, but you gotta let it go. We've been down this road, and I'm tired of it. I'm just..." He looked up at Dean with the puppy face. "I'm tired, man."

Dean shook his head, trying to come up with something to stem the flow of utter horseshit - uh, true, almost _psychically_ _accurate _horseshit, but still - coming from his brother's general mouth vicinity, but Sam was already standing up and pulling on his coat.

Dean found his voice at the sight of Sam actually prepping to go out. "Listen, you were the one just earlier today saying he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, okay? Maybe, I'm just thinking about that, hoping you're wrong. Because-" Dean hit on something. "Because maybe I just trust that if you feel off, it's because something _is_ off. Maybe I just trust your gut and your gut is telling you-"

"It's not my gut, Dean." Sam pulled on his coat and snagged the Impala keys from the little table by the door. "It's you."

Dean's stomach flipped, but there was nothing accusatory in Sam's tone or face, just disappointment. Not quite reassuring, but not damning either.

Sam sighed with his whole body and looked like he might change his mind or apologize or at least suggest Dean come with him. But instead, he tilted his head toward the glowing laptop screen and said, "I should be back in an hour or so. I hope you have better luck than I did." He turned to the door, and without looking back, said, "We can't live like this, Dean. It's not sustainable. You gotta just trust me that everything's fine. We have to live like everything's fine. Until it's not."

_IV. that so soars above us; humanity is a trap_

He should have told Dean to come with him. He should have suggested they table it til morning, really. There was no guarantee Detective Rosen would even be at the station at - Sam checked his watch. Eight-thirty in the evening. Stupid.

Sam tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel, stopped at a red light. The town was small: one motel, a handful of traffic lights along one main drag, surrounded by farmland. It shouldn't have had so many police, or been as busy as they'd seen it. It gave him a Stepford kind of feeling, but he shook that off. _Everything's fine._

It _was_ fine, though. Dean had gotten used to Sam screwing up, so he was watching him for a tell, for a sign he was involved in something he was keeping from Dean - but he wasn't, and it rankled that Dean just jumped to that anytime Sam made like, a _facial expression_.

Ugh.

Still. The odds of catching Rosen were slim, and Dean's stupid sadface when he left, and weren't things generally good with them lately? Maybe explaining to Dean what was going on, which was absolutely nothing, would do more good than aimlessly following leads that couldn't, probably, be followed until morning anyway.

Fine. He'd turn around. He'd go back. He always went back.

The light changed and Sam pressed the gas.

And almost hit a woman in red.

He stood up on the brake pedal. She was illuminated in his headlights, hands up and out to stop him, and when he did stop inches from her knees, she put her hands on the hood of the Impala and looked off to the right as if someone were chasing her.

Sam slammed the car into park and tumbled out toward her, his own hands up in a show of safety, of non-violence.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he soothed. She reached a hand out to him; she was crying and her lip was split. She clung onto his coat. He patted her back and pulled her away from the front of the car, toward the driver's side because she kept looking to the right, and he set her there leaning against the door and he kept a hand outstretched to her while he stepped back toward the front, to stave off whatever had been chasing her.

"It's - it's my boyfriend," she sobbed.

Not a monster. Just a _monster._ Sam peered into the darkness. "Get in the car," he said, just before a shape barreled out of the shadow into him. They both went down. Sam strained to look up and check on the woman; she was frozen by fear. "Get in the car!" For his lack of attention, he took a meaty hook that shook his jaw. A bloom of something on his jawline. The close-up view of this man's hand shaking out the sting of having punched someone full force, the silver of rings flashing in the distant streetlight. _Serves you right._ Sam recovered quickly, grabbed at the man's arm as he was levering himself up away from Sam, toward the woman. He obviously thought he'd taken Sam out of the fight, but he didn't know Sam, and Sam latched onto his retreating arm and climbed up it, dragging the man back downward and gathering momentum and over they went again, but Sam had the advantage of surprise and of height and he shovelled that momentum into his fist and clocked the guy upside the head.

The man lay still.

Sam sat on his legs and heaved breaths, but he watched for movement, because he wasn't going to make the same mistake this guy made. After a moment, he got himself together and stood. She was still standing at the car door, staring, shaking, holding her arms around her middle.

Sam went to her, put a hand to her shoulder. "It's okay now. I'm going to take you to the hospi-"

"I'm fine. I just." She stared at the man on the ground, and she frowned, and Sam turned back.

The man stirred, but he didn't attack. He got himself together, snarled something unintelligible to the woman, then glared at Sam. He cradled his hand and ran off down the street. Sam let out a breath he hadn't been intentionally holding.

"Okay, hospital."

"No." She smoothed her dress and dabbed at her mouth. The bleeding had stopped, but her bottom lip was fat and red. She looked up at Sam with steel. "I'd like to go to the police station and make a report."

Sam furrowed his brow. "Are you sure?"

She nodded, then she brushed past him to circled around to the passenger side door, all dignity.

"I'm sorry," she said once they were en route. "I must have seemed like a hysterical woman."

"No," Sam soothed. "You were attacked, and frightened. But you did the right thing. Looked for a car and - it worked out."

She seemed to accept that answer, and he detected in her what he sometimes thought he saw in Dean - _nothing is alright, but if it's possible to behave as though everything's fine, trust me to find a way. _

"That guy's your boyfriend, huh?"

She spared him a look. "Was, I guess."

"What set him off?"

She shrugged, fatigue in the gesture, a sign that said _this is a repeat performance_. "Who knows. His favorite spoon wasn't clean?" She gave him a half-smile. "I don't really want to-"

"No, no of course," Sam said. "I shouldn't have asked. You don't have to talk about it."

She took a deep, settling breath, patting her lap. Sam saw that her hands were shaking. She was holding it together pretty well, but she was on the edge. It struck him how normal people suffered terrible things, complicated, human things, while he and Dean struggled with what were really black and white issues. Demons are bad, kill them. Monsters are bad, kill them. Occasionally Madison's face would swim before him as he took the kill shot, or Amy's teeth would tear at him in a dream, but they were exceptions.

Meanwhile, a woman lives in a house with a man who could snap and kill her at any moment, but there's love and history there, there's sweetness and shared pain there, and one of them is a monster, and the other shouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger and leave, but they're both just human, they're both just trying to survive. Because she should run, but she knows his past, and she can't leave him when deep down he's just a scared little boy trying to resist but ultimately failing to deny abuses he himself suffered, grasping for any kind of control over his life, and when things don't go according to his plan-

_It does sound familiar, doesn't it? Don't you live with an alcoholic that would rather see you die than become something he doesn't like? _

Sam blew out a breath, blinked. He resisted looking in the rearview; there was no one in the backseat. _That's so three years ago,_ he thought, as loudly as possible.

_Which one of you is the monster? Which one of you is grasping for control?_

"Everything's going to be okay," he murmured, to himself or to her.

The woman looked at him seriously then, and from the corner of his eye he saw her expression change into concern. She reached toward his face, where the boyfriend had caught him with the silver ring. It was bleeding freely down his jawline. And he cursed when he tested the extent of the mess - here he was about to bloody up his dress shirt.

"Just great," he said.

"I'm so sorry. Here, let me-" She pulled a napkin out of her purse and dabbed at his throat. She slicked up toward his jaw, toward the cut, smearing red into his skin but saving his shirt, and he caught her hand with the napkin in it and he placed it back into her lap.

"Thanks."

She looked taken aback, a little disappointed. Maybe his gentle voice had betrayed her; she thought he was going to let her mother him, care for him in exchange for him rescuing her, but he had had enough of getting close to people, and the delicate way he treated her was a lie if what it said was _let's care for each other, as strangers who meet in blood and grief might, briefly but sincerely. _

That wasn't an option anymore. Not for him.

She turned to face front, subdued. "Will you come in with me?"

Sam nodded as he pulled into the station parking lot. "Of course. They'll want my statement anyway." And here he was at the station after all, after intending to turn around and go back.

_Free will is a lie, Sammy._

Sam closed his eyes and did not reach for the scar on his hand.


End file.
